Deadly striker to strengthen Amicale against Ba

BA will face a much stronger Amicale team in the return semi-final of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) Champions League at Port Vila in Vanuatu tomorrow.

The Amicale side will be boosted with last year's golden boot award winner Sanni Issa and Fenedy Masauvakalo who won the award in 2011.

Masauvakalo came on as a replacement in the last quarter of the match at Govind Park last Sunday.

Amicale coach Nathan Hall told the OFC website that the crowd would play a major role.

Hall said they enjoyed good support during the 2-1 victory in the first semi-final.

"The fans will be a massive factor in my opinion," he said.

"In Ba on the Sunday, it was like Amicale was playing a home game. That's no disrespect to Ba fans, but we had 200 to 250 parochial young Vanuatu supporters who never stopped singing and dancing and drumming for 95 minutes.

"So you can multiply that by 50 and you have got Port Vila because you are going to have a full stadium and everybody will be doing that.

"There will be a great atmosphere and I'm sure for the boys that it will really help them lift their game through the intensity of the fans and the passion and the energy that they show."

Amicale goes into the match with the added advantage of scoring the away goal. This means that Vodafone 4R Electrical Ba will need to win by two clear goals to claim a spot in the final.

Hall said the inclusion of Masauvakalo and Issa was timely.

"Fenedy has only just come back into the mix, so he is still a little bit off full match fitness so I need to be careful how quickly I bring him back into the frame," he said.

"We hope to get Fenedy's fitness up a little bit more but we have got to be careful with these players because he has done next to nothing for the past four months now.

"It is obviously been tough for Sanni not being able to be part of the team in Fiji for the group stage.

"He is probably a little bit behind physically as well because he has not played 90 minutes for more than one month now."